May 11, 2012 9:09 AM

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Written by Louise Knott Ahern/ Video by Paul Henderson

Michigan’s gray wolf was removed from the federal endangered species list on Jan. 27 after four decades as a protected animal.

Its long journey back from near extinction is hailed as one of the greatest wildlife survival stories in U.S. history — flourishing from just six animals in 1973 to nearly 700 today in Michigan alone.

But the story of the gray wolf is far from over. The policies that led to its recovery and now the state’s sensitive balancing act between wolves and humans will have a ripple effect far outside the boundaries of Michigan.

Though the wolves can be found today almost exclusively in the Upper Peninsula, their story resonates throughout the entire state.

And in some ways, advocates say, the story of the wolf strikes at the heart of the very identity of the Great Lakes State.

“The wolf is symbolic,” says Michigan State University researcher Michelle Lute. “It forces us to ask, ‘What does it really mean to be a Michigander?’ ”

From 5,000 feet, the brown-and-white winter landscape of the Upper Peninsula is a reminder there are still untouched lands left to explore, places where there’s so little civilization to see that it’s hard to believe this is a state of 10 million people.

A few times a month, Department of Natural Resources pilot Neil Harri flies over these vast miles of aspen and snow to conduct one of the most important but simple pieces of the state’s plan for managing the wolf population. He finds out where they are and counts them.

Harri has a reputation not only for welcoming guests on his monitoring flights but also for carting them back home, green and queasy. Tracking wolves from the air does not make for a smooth flight. He warns people ahead of time that if they need to throw up they should grab the trash bag in the back, and in case of emergency, he’ll try for a tree landing. They’re rarely fatal, he explains.

But he promises you’ll forget everything — the tug of gravity on your stomach, the bumps and jiggles of flying in a small plane, the image of crashing into a tree — the minute the plane’s radar system comes to life with a single, insistent PING.

And when it happens, when that sound breaks through the roar of the propeller to announce that a radio-collared wolf is near, Harri transforms from laid-back to alert. He begins turning dials on the instrument panel, trying to pinpoint more closely where the signal is coming from. His eyes scan the ground below, experience training him to watch for movement, not necessarily an animal.

In the distance, he spots a frozen riverbed. Wolves can often be found near those, he explains. They like to travel that way, using the icy creeks as roads through the winter woods.

Harri flies lower and lower, turning the plane practically on its side so he can see better. The PING grows louder. And then, yes, over there, in the trees. There’s something over there.

One by one, they emerge from the woods. One, two, three, four — seven in all run from their hiding spot to scamper along the ice. And for the few brief minutes they show themselves, they tell a story which some feared would be forever relegated to history.

In Michigan, the gray wolf runs again.

Where wolves run wild

That these animals exist at all, much less in such a large, vibrant pack, officially makes Michigan one of the only places in the United States where wolves are no longer the stuff of whispered myth but instead a living, breathing part of the ecosystem.

Alaska, of course, has always had them. So have Wyoming and Montana. There’s also Yellowstone National Park, home to one of the most famous wolf packs in the country.

That Michigan can once again count itself among those places lends some swagger to a state that has stumbled through the past decade. And the wolves’ resurgence is something the majority of Michiganders say they support, at least according to a recent MSU study. More than 80 percent of Michigan residents surveyed last year said they enjoy knowing wolves exist here.

“Wolves are just iconic,” says Brian Roell, a biologist with the DNR and the state’s sort of chief wolf man. “They represent the wild.”

Roell knows everything about the animal — what it eats, where it sleeps, why it will stare or pace when scared, what its howl really means, why it likes to travel paths made by others to save its own energy. Mostly he knows that wolves, no matter how a person may feel about them, make Michigan special.

“That should be a selling point to Michigan,” he says. “It should be viewed as a resource. There aren’t a lot of places where you can go see wild wolves or moose without traveling to Alaska or Canada.”

But with that unmistakable coolness factor comes a complicated set of challenges. So few endangered species — and certainly no other major predators — have ever recovered enough to no longer need federal protection.